What's happening in Mediterranean & Africa

 

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Trans-Med migrant flow abates to the great relief of east west trade lanes

While UN agencies and NGOs are more concerned with the health and welfare of migrants flowing from Muslim lands across the Mediterranean into Christian Europe than stopping it, the good news for international shipping is that the flow is much abated.

The main stream of migrants has been from Libya into Italy, Malta and Greece and from Morocco and Algeria into Spain, and, until recently, across the Aegean from Turkey to Greece.

Henceforth, few containerships and their 20-man crews will be faced with the dilemma of either ignoring the plight of a small craft holding 300 desperate people or rescuing them, feeding them and keeping them under control without means to do so, or even the deck space to accommodate them. Imagine tens of seamen, with daily seafaring duties to perform, having to keep hundreds of idle, angry men in order.

The migrant volume decline was as sudden as the increase was. After soaring to a peak from 2014 to 2016, numbers fell just as quickly. There was the usual increase in the summer, but it has been barely discernible compared to the pre-2015-16 swells.

Another reason is action taken by authorities and NGOs, though some say the NGOs deliberately contributed to the flow, as did the United Nations by making it safer to make the crossing. By providing rescue services closer to the Libyan territorial waters, which could not be breached without a UN Security Council Resolution, facilitated the crossing.

More than 30 per cent of the migrants come from West Africa, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Guinea and Gambia; 17 per cent from North Africa, five per cent from East Africa and 15 per cent from the Middle East and five per cent from Bangladesh while other nationalities are unknown.

Yet another reason for the decline appears to be the impermanence of the phenomenon. So many people were in such a state of desperation yet had the means to pay princely sums demanded by human traffickers, in some cases acquired by criminal means, to be in a position to take the risks involved. Such people might have found themselves on the wrong side of a civil war, the wrong religion on the territory in which they lived or were fleeing felons.

Another big factor was government response. However it inconvenient for merchant ships to-ing and fro-ing from Gibraltar to Suez, they were obliged by Law of the Sea to rescue those in distress. But it was also incumbent upon member state signatories of these conventions to relieve these ships of their rescued victims once they landed.

But relief was no longer an occasional ad hoc measure to deal with the sinking or stranding of a ship with its 20- to 40-man crew. This was entirely new. Now it was a case of 600,000 people being landed in Italy alone, streaming across South Central Mediterranean since 2014.

Once the scale of the problem had been appreciated, various forces came into play. There were people, perhaps mostly Europeans, who wanted the northward flow stopped while there were others whose primary concern was humanitarian, a concern voiced by state bureaucracies, and the non-government organisations (NGO) they fund, which could speak for government without appearing to do so.

At the forefront of this was the United Nations, which sought to have the refugees evenly dispersed throughout Europe. It opposed the closing or borders that voters were vociferously demanding, but were largely ignored by the bureaucratically-driven EU.

At first the response was strictly humanitarian, rescuing, feeding, clothing and sheltering those in need. But many said its very success encouraged greater flow with its fleet NGO rescue craft, warships - even a submarine on occasion - as well as helicopters and spotter planes. Now that the rescue service became reliable, able to pick up victims three miles from shore, it prompted charges that the entire operation, especially the NGO rescue craft role, had become a "ferry service".

In response, the project was re-named Operation Sophia, and charged with stopping human trafficking, and only secondarily, the rescue of migrants. The EU also imposed a Code of Conduct on the NGOs, which they were reluctant to sign. One, described himself as a "leftwing activist" was less interested in rescue but in getting the poor of the world invade the rich of the world's territory. NGOs with such views were charged with flashing signal lights to assist the human traffickers, directing their laden craft to rescue and asylum. This practice the Code of Conduct outlawed.

To stop human traffickers, first the idea was to destroy their boats that conveyed the migrants north. This would supposedly deprive them of a means of conveyance. Traffickers would soon run out of seaworthy craft, it was reasoned and their business model would be disrupted. There were times when 10 such boats carrying 1,000 migrants was a stone’s throw from Libyan shores within plain sight of rescuers.

But it didn't work. As rescuers became more adept, and rescue more reliable, the boats used to convey the migrants did not need to be as seaworthy. Cheap inflatable and easily replaceable rafts would do, making the destruction of these newer craft next to meaningless.

Taking on the lion's share of Operation Sophia was the EUNAVFOR Med, a joint EU naval task force whose mandate it was to tackle the human trafficking networks launching unseaworthy rubber dinghies with tens of thousands of migrants.

The problem was that with the best will in the world there was little that could be done against human traffickers, because there was little navies could do but burn their easily replaceable boats and perhaps frustrate attempts to recover their engines when authorities sank their rubber dinghies close to Libyans shores, which became a no-go area for anything but direct rescue.

As one British assessment of Operation Sophia put it, people smuggling begins onshore, so a naval mission is the wrong way to go. "Once the boats have set sail, it is too late.”

"Operation Sophia has failed to meet the objective of its mandate - to disrupt the business model. It should not be renewed. However, it has been a humanitarian success, and it is critical that the EU’s lifesaving search and rescue work continue, but using more suitable, non-military vessels,” said the British report.

Operations in 2017 appeared to be equally ineffective. They had destroyed 500 dinghies and arrested more than 100 suspects, but most were low grade. Only one involved a leader of a smuggling ring - an Eritrean. In Italy, thousands have been arrested and hundreds sentenced, the majority for manning the boats, but few leaders have been caught in a business that begins in the countries of origin and is often mixed up with corrupt governments.

One response to further onshore initiatives was to seek the cooperation of the UN-recognised Libyan Government of National Accord that runs Tripoli. But there is another government with wide popular support in Tobruk and as well as ISIS or ISIL insurgents who run two towns in between. All are at war with each other.

The Tripoli regime was approached and after secret negotiations a deal was done with the EU to pay costs and undertake training personnel to prevent migrant boats from getting beyond their territorial waters. The terms of the deal are secret, but everyone went away from the table happy. Some Tripoli coast guard men have been trained and all seem to be pleased with the progress.

Whether this means anything substantial is a question for another day. One thing is clear, all is greatly improved for the Asia-Europe shipping whatever the outcomes may be for the other parties involved.

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